


In the Shadow Of Your Heart

by its_pronounced_wiener_slave



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Aranea POV, Brief Mention of Suicide, Confessions, F/M, Friendship, M/M, Pining, always the pining and confessions with me sorry, just to be clear, platonic aranea/ignis, this is an ignoct fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 19:13:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9286040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/its_pronounced_wiener_slave/pseuds/its_pronounced_wiener_slave
Summary: Two people, once on opposite sides of a bitter war, search for light where there seems to be only unfathomable darkness.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out  
> You left me in the dark  
> No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight  
> In the shadow of your heart
> 
> And in the dark, I can hear your heartbeat  
> I tried to find the sound  
> But then it stopped, and I was in the darkness,  
> So darkness I became.
> 
> (Cosmic Love - Florence + the Machine)

In the days that followed Noctis’ disappearance, only a hundred thousand things went horribly, horribly awry. The darkness fell, and fell, until it seemed like it would pass through the dirt and sea, and leave the people of Eos at the mercy of whatever horrors lie on the other side of night.

The deamons were a problem. _The_ problem, if Aranea was being honest, because the average person can hardly fight a cold let alone a manifestation of all the things wrong with the world and the men who inhabit it.

All told, she wasn’t too fond of men. The less they were worth their salt, the louder they pissed and moaned, at least in her experience, and other than Biggs and Wedge she hadn’t met many that were willing to kowtow to a woman. Even if she _was_ the woman in charge.

But it wasn’t until the first time she met with Noctis’ old crew in Lestallum after the loss of light that she discovered she might be wrong. If only a little.

It’d been only a few days since the Prince disappeared and refugees were already pouring into the city, which had essentially become one of the only destinations equipped to keep the light lorn citizens of Lucis safe from terrors Aranea herself often struggled to best. They’d met up by accident, actually, having crossed paths at the busy marketplace on an uncomfortably hot day. It was a small miracle that she saw them at all given the cramped walkways and frantic influx of shoppers, though they could hardly be called shoppers when many had already taken to harassing vendors for wares out of fear of starvation. The fear and frenzy setting in is what made Aranea’s skin crawl. She didn’t much like sticking her neck out when things started to turn, so when she spotted that wiry kid with the camera, the blond one, squeezing between an ornery Lestallum woman and a desperate refugee, she’d snatched him by the wrist without thinking and nearly scared him straight out of his skin.

Turns out they were good company to keep. The Leville had a room for them despite the No Vacancy sign propped up outside, so she’d spent a pretty unassuming evening touching base with them.

It was awkward, and a little sad. She’d remembered their faces differently, she was good with faces, but they sat strangely around each other in the hotel room, side by side but just as easily miles apart. It made her uncomfortable, but they were characteristically kind, so it didn’t bother her when she saw them a few days later. Then again the day after that, and the day after that. In between fighting daemons and taking the occasional odd job, she’d begun to see them pretty often. Lestallum was only so big.

She wouldn’t exactly call them friends. But three _less_ enemies, well. She’d take that.

\---

A month after that evening at the Leville, she and the boys each had their own places to call home in Lestallum. Nothing too fancy in anyone’s case, and scattered throughout the more rough areas of town, but any person resting their head someplace other than the dirt ought to keep from complaining nowadays, as far as she was concerned.

The first time she visited that unfortunate soul who always followed the brat around, she was answering a request on the jobs list that had cropped up in the center of the city. People had taken to posting requests for aid—notes and images of loved ones gone missing or shipments stolen—so that a strong arm might lend an equally strong hand. He lived in what looked like a garage or perhaps one of those shuttered storefronts that had been converted to living space to accommodate the burgeoning population. She entered the cramped space through the open shutter, hearing slightly elevated voices within.

“ _Enough,_ Prompto, enough,” Ignis says a bit rough, and even Aranea thinks it sounds a bit strange coming out of him. He’s sat at a desk with a tiny lamp in the corner, pen and paper lying neatly on the surface. He swats the kid away with one hand; clearly miffed about something she hadn’t much interest in knowing.

“Y-you’re gonna be difficult about this, huh?”

“I appreciate your candor as always, however I would appreciate it _more_ were it invited.” Specs still sounds irritable.

Prompto throws his arms up in the air, visibly surrendering to the man sitting pretty in an ugly chair.

“ _Fine._ But don’t keep asking me to hide things from Gladio—”

“Trouble in paradise?” Aranea asks finally, stepping forward into the glow of the tiny lamp. Prompto doesn’t even seem surprised to see her when he turns, he just shoots her a look, an odd look, and storms out a little bleak.

She casts her gaze down at Ignis who is looking in her direction, eyes still obscured by dark lenses.

“Lady Aranea.”

“Wasn’t expecting a job from the right hand of the King,” she jokes crassly, and it’s definitely a sore spot for the man in front of her. She wonders if it was a bit harsh.

“There are few I can ask whom I can trust not to perish.”

“Daemons.”

He nods.

“Undoubtedly, but what I need is information.” He stands, carrying with him a gust of some pleasant scent on his skin or in his hair, pulling the slip of paper from the desk and holding it out to Aranea. She reacts by flashing him a dubious look before catching herself, feeling suddenly foolish.

“What’s this?” she asks, plucking it from his slender gloved fingers and looking it over. Ignis doesn’t respond, and once she scans the information she understands why. “Why don’t you get your big guy to handle this? The brat was _your_ friend.”

“And his safe return will benefit only his friends, you wager?”

Aranea narrows her eyes. He’s clever. She always knew he was polite, and very obviously the brains of the outfit, but she was just starting to realize _how_ smart. How potentially dangerous.

“I get your point, Specs, but you didn’t answer my question.” She’s pretty smart herself.

Ignis is visibly uncomfortable, leaning a hand on the desk and turning his head away.

“Please. _They_ ask questions. I need someone for whom the answers to such questions are of little consequence. You are formidable, indeed, and discreet.”

“You _know_ this is probably pointless, right? What are the odds the kid's still even _alive?”_

Ignis clenches a fist, turning his back to her completely when it seems he can’t fight back the scowl that creeps across his face.

“I don’t mean to be rude, Lady Aranea. You may take the job or you may not.” In other words, _Leave Me Alone._

She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, considering, before jamming the note into a pocket and taking her leave.

_Alright, Specs. I’ll extort some civvies for ya. Might be interesting._

\---

It’s very late at night the next time she sees him, _real_ night, like the time when your ass should be in bed and your eyes should be shut. She had some things from the market she’d picked up for him. Despite Prompto hanging around rather often and making weird eyes at her, she’d gotten into the habit of spending time with Ignis even when she didn’t _need_ to, and the need arose occasionally when he had another semi-clandestine task for her to fulfill.

She knew what he was doing but never asked; she never pried about the ends, only accepted that she was one of perhaps many means, and because she was beginning to enjoy his company, she opted to let sleeping dogs lie.

“Who’s there?” he asked as she shuffled in, paper bag of groceries in hand. Gladio wasn’t around much, too busy she guessed, but Prompto often took care of these kinds of domestic duties when they were too much for Ignis; a man adjusting to blindness in an overcrowded city that was at present dealing with a petty crime issue.

“Just me, Specs,” she calls, and sits his bag on the small table at the foot of his neatly made cot. He didn’t have a proper kitchen but he’d outfitted a corner of the room with the trappings of one; shelving, electric range, and a shop sink that he was probably just lucky the unit came with.

He emerges from the bathroom not far from his desk, looking a little harried even in the dim lighting.

“It didn’t sound like you,” he says abruptly.

“What do I sound like?” she asks, a little amused. His expression doesn’t change though. In fact, she thinks he looks a little red.

“Your steps,” he points down to her feet and she realizes at once what he means.

“Oh, I don’t always wear all that you know. I wear _regular_ people clothes sometimes.”

He inhales deeply, nodding, still distracted.

“Right.”

She makes a fuss about the groceries but he doesn’t seem to care much. He’s typically formal and appreciative, but on this particular visit he just seems tired. It’s odd for him, very odd.

As she leaves, she wonders if the drops that stained his shirt were just her imagination, and she starts to think about Ignis in a different light.

\---

_“Damn it all!”_

Ignis is shouting before she even makes it into his unit and the prospect startles her; she’s never heard him so cross about anything.

It’s almost completely black inside and she strains to see, but it’s clear he’s on the floor, in the midst of propping himself back onto his feet. She rushes over to him and takes an arm, and to her relief he grabs hold instead of pushing her away.

“What happened, Specs? You didn’t break anything did you?”

“Merely my pride, as is the dreadful norm,” he spits out as she helps seat him on his bed, turning to his desk to set the tiny lamp alight. “Levity aside, it seems Prompto came by again as I was busy and rearranged something.”

She looks around the room and everything appears the same to her, but she dares not say a word. His wounded pride, and all.

As she returns to his side, she realizes his glasses are folded neatly on the table at the foot of the cot, and she seizes the opportunity to study his face. Falling silent for perhaps longer than was polite, she’s taken aback by how grotesque and truly awful his scars are. She feels something welling inside her, warm and familiar but also somewhat wretched, and it takes her a moment to gain her composure again.

“Is everything alright, Aranea?” he asks, sounding genuinely concerned.

Concerned? Shouldn’t he hate everything and everyone by now?

 _I would,_ she thinks.

“I’m fine, I just came by to check on you. Was enjoying the balmy evening,” she smiles, familiar with his hatred of Lestallum’s climate. Ignis snorts amiably.

“You needn’t put yourself out on my account. I was just ready for bed, in fact.”

In other words, _I Want to be Alone._

Ignis is kind. Painfully wonderful in a way that usually makes Aranea want to eat glass, but with Ignis it’s different. And it’s not because he’s blind, or even because he seems so totally alone. She hates that she pities him, but every time he hands her a request to find more information that she knows will lead nowhere, every time he tries to hide his impairment, every time his impairment is painfully obvious, her heart sags with guilt. And she isn’t even sure why.

The glasses are on the table, where they belong. They don’t do anything but hide his face, and it’s a lovely face.

“Iggy,” she says, and he tilts his head up towards her, curious. “I’m gonna call you Iggy from now on.”

“Alright,” he answers, brow knitting and lips curling in a subtle expression of amusement. “May I ask why?”

She bends over and gives him a light kiss on the cheek, a kiss good night, and he touches the place her lips grazed as if he hadn’t realized how grateful he’d be for human contact.

“Specs is kinda dumb. Doesn’t make sense. You don’t need ‘em.”

\---

How many months has it been since Noctis disappeared? If she asked Iggy, he would know. He obsessed over it actually. She’d found his records strewn across his desk one evening that he was particularly agitated, babbling about Noctis and the darkness and the daemons and seemingly unfazed that Aranea was hearing any of it.

“Ten months tomorrow,” he says over his coffee, seated at his desk with his legs crossed all prim like he does.

“I can’t believe it,” she answers, and they’re quiet for a long while. The door is shuttered so they could chat in peace, and it really was a blessed thing. Being around Ignis made her feel relaxed.

“Neither can I,” he finally responds, subdued, and again it summons a long pause.

“I suppose you must think about him a lot.” It seems uncouth to crack jokes and for the first time, she doesn’t feel compelled to do it anyway.

_“Every second.”_

The words came out so quickly she almost missed them, but the tenderness they were laden with was unmistakable.

“I’m sorry, Iggy.”

He lifts his head, staring straight forward beneath lidded eyes. He’d taken to leaving his glasses off, at least when Aranea was around, though she couldn’t speak for his time away from home. He inhales deeply, breath catching on something lodged in his throat. The look in his eyes is taxed, painful, and he presses his lips together in a hard line as he swallows down whatever odious thing that was keeping him from breathing freely. At first she thinks the gloss in his eyes is a trick of the light, but when his nose starts to turn a little red and he casts his gaze downward, obscuring his face with his hand, she’s sure it’s no trick.

It dawns on her, clear as the sky on the last day she ever saw, and she can’t believe she didn’t see it sooner.

“ _You love him.”_

He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t move his hand or lift his head. He only nods pitifully like a wounded animal.

“Like the _fool_ that I am,” he whispers under the threat of a sob as several tears dampen his shirt.

“You’re not a fool, Ignis,” she says, regretting every joke or disparaging thing she ever said about the fallen Prince in front of him over the past ten months; for failing to encourage him when he hit wall after wall. Her heart fractured for this pitiful, guilt stricken creature in front of her, and all she really wanted to do was comfort him and never see him broken like this ever again.

“I’ve never felt so _lost_ in all my life,” he mourns, burying his face in that same hand.

Before Aranea knows it, she’s kneeling before him, a gentle hand on his knee, not fully aware of what she’s doing even as she’s doing it; even as she tucks a few errant hairs behind his ear as he cries quietly at first, gasping for air between clenched teeth.

“He’s gonna come back, Ignis, you’ll see,” she consoles him poorly, regretting the choice of words. He seems to respond to them as well as anyone would.

“He left me in this _darkness_ , Aranea,” he says bitterly, losing precious control, clutching his face in both hands and nearly doubling over. She gathers him into her shoulder, so overwhelmed by his anguish that she can feel the burn of tears at the corners of her own eyes.

It’s well past midnight before she leaves. She just doesn’t feel right making her exit until he’s fast asleep, hopefully someplace better than this awful hell scape of a world they’re forced to call home. Hopefully someplace he can see his Prince, and be comforted.

Outside of his unit, she looks up into the night sky, the night that she’s already come to detest so much, and wonders for the first time where Noctis has truly gone.

“You don’t deserve him, brat.”

But she wishes he would come back anyway.

\---

Ignis seems alarmingly upbeat at the end of year one when she sees him a day after getting a phone call from Cor Leonis.

“Ah, Aranea,” Ignis says, beaming, and gestures to her with a rather dangerous looking dagger in his hand. “It’s been too long.”

“You doin’ alright, Iggy? Not contemplating suicide are we? I didn’t think it was your style,” she teases him darkly.

Ignis sucks his teeth in faux annoyance. “Charming, as always. I wouldn’t dare.”

“A relief,” she says as she steps into his unit again, and she’s dumbfounded to find that, not only does it have more lighting, all of that lighting is on full blast.

“Do you know what this is?” he asks suddenly, presenting her with the dagger, expression on his face a mixture of excitement and expectance.

“Uh, I may be a _bit_ rusty but it looks like a dagger.”

“True, indeed. However, it’s far more than just that.”

Aranea is quiet and if Ignis could see her face, he’d probably furrow his brow in disdain.

“It is a weapon bestowed by the King of Lucis,” he continues. “One that his faithful stewards may call upon through the power of Royal magic.”

To her shock, he snaps his wrist suddenly—a flourish of the hand—and the blade vanishes in a flash of refracted blue light.

“So? What’s that mean?” she asks after catching her breath.

“ _Everything,_ Aranea. It means he’s still alive.”

\---

“This is a bad idea, Iggy, don’t be stupid!”

“There’s little stupid about it, and I’ll thank you not to raise your voice to me on the subject again,” Ignis raises his own voice to meet Gladio’s level of intensity, but both men crack when Aranea stands silhouetted in the shutter doorway, tapping a booted armored foot.

“There a problem in here?”

Gladiolus was kind of an ass, one of those big guys that likes to push when he shouldn’t be pushing, and even though he’s always been kind to her, Aranea found it difficult to be a fan.

“None of your business. Just trying to convince an _old friend_ here not to get himself killed. Apparently that’s asking too much.” He sneers at Ignis and Aranea is prickly almost immediately.

“Why don’t you back off? He’s an adult last time I checked. Isn’t there a gym somewhere missing you?” She strides up to him, close, too close, nose perhaps turned up a little too far. Ignis senses her there and places hand on her forearm, light.

“Aranea, it’s quite alright,” he says. “Gladio was just leaving.”

Gladio twists his face into a look of displeasure before shrugging, defeated.

“Whatever. I still think this is a mistake.”

Once he’s gone, Ignis bows his head to her.

“Thank you. You didn’t have to do all that. I’m quite used to his more passionate opinions.”

“I don’t know, big guy like that yelling at a blind guy. Seems kinda unnecessary.”

“He’s only worried and he has reason to be. Cor Leonis has contacted us. He wants to train us all in the event that the King returns to ascend the throne.”

Aranea grins openly at the way the words seem to give him life, and despite her own concerns about a blind man fighting daemons, she now has such a warm place in her heart for him that she can’t help but encourage, encourage, encourage.

“You can do whatever you want to, Iggy. You’ve survived a lot worse than some intense training.”

He casts his eyes down, smiling, the coyness looking rather good on him.

“From here on out, we shall be traveling intermittently. The future looks unsure, and yet I haven’t felt such clarity in over a year’s time.” He looks up at her, past her, searching for the right words. “What I mean to say, Aranea…is _thank you_. You have been a wonderful, albeit unexpected companion through all of this.”

She raps him on the shoulder, trying to stay tough despite her own sentimentality rearing its head.

“Don’t act like this is goodbye! We’ll meet again. I’ll make sure of it. So stay sharp, Iggy. You have to make it. You have to meet him again.”

He nods and it’s an odd but astonishingly beautiful mixture of somber and hopeful.

“If he is in darkness as well, then that’s what I must become.”


End file.
